At 16 years of age, I picked up my father's love of old English classics and since he has a 1966 Ford Cortina MK1, for my first car I bought a 1969 Ford Cortina 1600GT with the money I had saved. At first, the car was a good runner and didn't have rust (surprisingly) but the interior wasn't that great. However about a month after my purchase it spun a bearing and I had to rebuild the engine at my school's auto shop and did all the other details the car lacked. I tried to keep the car original. It might have been more convenient for a more powerful engine and maybe a 5 speed for a daily driver but I wanted to stay true to the originality of the car - and I liked the 1600 Kent engine. It has a lumpier cam and a bigger weber carb with bigger jets just to give it a little more grunt.

It ran very well for a while until a few days ago the transmission decided to give up and will need to be replaced soon.

I look forward to learning all about Cortina's and other English classics!

Welcome, I am the guy who responded to your ad and pointed you in this direction. Nice car you have there and I think we have seen it before. The licence plate rings a bell. There are lots of folks in this group with a lot on experience with these cars. Good to have a youngster join instead of all us old f*rts!
Gary_________________the older i get,the faster i went...

Ah yes, the plate was off the Red/Gold Cortina. Basically my father was in search of a Cortina once he sold his Triumph Herald and a guy here in Mission had two MK1s - the red/gold and a white one. He only wanted to sell the red one but it was in very rough shape and was completely rotten. We sent it out to get the body done. However, he had to get rid of the white one as well and this one was in good shape already so we ended up with both of his cars. However the red one didn't end up being driven a whole lot so we had to sell it. So my dad is left with a white one.

The blue Cortina was a good deal. $3750 was what it was listed for. I had to jump on it.